Rational - Response of Flood Events to Land Use and Climate Change - page 3

Fig. 1.2 Annual and cumulative cost of damage caused by different hazards [ 3 - 5 ]

From 1900 to 1990, *9.2 % of worldwide flood events occurred in Europe.
This proportion significantly increased between 1991 and 2000 (*15.2 %) and
2001-2010 (*13.1 %) [ 1 , 2 ]. Figure 1.2 shows the annual and cumulative cost of
damage caused by floods/inundations, debris flows, landslides, and rock falls from
1972 to 2007, as well as the total costs of the six major flood events around the
world (Fig. 1.2 ), indicated by short horizontal lines and dates, which were reported
by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [ 3 - 5 ].
During the last 30 years, 2,159 flood events were reported by the EM-DAT
project, resulting in deaths of 206,303 people. Furthermore, flooding causes
extensive damage to infrastructure and crops. The affected area is usually

immense, but this depends on topographic features [ 6 ].
During the last three decades (1973-2002), the reported number of disasters
caused by floods and registered in the EM-DAT database, which remained more or
less stable during the first two decades, increased progressively during the last
decade and experienced an exponential growth in the last three years.
In Western Europe, small disastrous floods are more frequently reported for
Belgium, France, and Switzerland. From 1973 to 2002, the most frequently
affected country by flood events was France, which accounts for almost 50 % of
disastrous floods reported. Half of these flood events occurred in the last
four years. Figure 1.3 shows the losses from major flood disasters in Europe
between 1970 and 2008 [ 3 - 5 ].
France accounted for the greatest number of deaths for each decade and for 68 %
of the total of reported deaths (between 1973 and 2002). Number of deaths over ten is
reported in 41 % of the total number of disastrous flood events with reported deaths.
The total number of deaths multiplied almost by three between the first and the